Taking Lindsay to the line

Assistant Treasurer
David Bradbury
is under no illusion that his seat of ­Lindsay in Sydney’s west will be a tough one to retain.

But AFR Weekend’s marginal seat poll shows he is set to suffer the most crushing defeat of the four Labor-held electorates surveyed, with a swing to the Liberals of 11.8 per cent overwhelming his slim 1.1 per cent margin.

Lindsay is an emerging bellwether electorate having been won by a member of the party voted to power since its creation in 1984. The AFR poll shows the trend could continue.

“A seat like Lindsay is always going to be a difficult seat to win and to hold – I’ve never taken the seat for granted," Mr Bradbury said on Friday, without having seen the poll results.

That is partly because he had to work so hard to secure it in the first placed. It took Mr Bradbury three attempts to win the seat with his first, against incumbent Jackie Kelly in 2001. He finally won on the back of the Kevin ’07 campaign, and again, narrowly, in 2010.

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This time he faces the same opponent in the Liberal’s
Fiona Scott
. But Ms Scott has been in the role for years and the Liberal campaign is not burdened by the fake pamphlet scandal that derailed it in 2007.

Two seats away, in the western Sydney division of Greenway, the poll shows Labor holding on to its seat by a slim margin of 0.1 per cent. There, the Liberals have put up
Jaymes Diaz
, who spectacularly failed to explain the Coalition’s asylum seeker policy last week. In contrast, Ms Scott has stolen headlines after Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
described her as having “sex appeal" while Mr Bradbury got negative publicity for getting testy with a radio host.

“I’m just focused on getting out there and meeting with and speaking with as many local residents as I can and trying to persuade people of the importance of re-electing me, principally because of what I’ve delivered but also on what I’ll deliver," said Mr Bradbury.

Mr Bradbury said people in his electorate had shown a preparedness to listen to what his party had to say since Kevin Rudd regained leadership.

The decision to scrap the carbon tax for a quicker transition to a trading scheme and the refugee resettlement arrangement with Papua New Guinea were “well received", he said.

Whether the battle to keep an emerging bellwether seat is harder against someone with sex appeal is “for others to pass judgment on", he said.

“I think people are looking for substance, that’s always been my pitch."

“Throughout that campaign, opinion columnists, journalists, polls were consistently telling me I had no chance, and we managed to win. At this point in the electoral cycle there’s always going to be polls, but there’s only one that counts."